Stream One Mile Creek

Greater watershed Lake Wakatipu → Kawarau River → Clutha River → Pacific Ocean

Height No individual fall exceeds 8m/26ft

Form Many drops

Volume Small

General location Just outside Queenstown, near the Fernhill roundabout

Specific location along the One Mile Creek track

Trail access From the roundabout a small unsealed road leads off to the north, I think there's a DOC sign. From here the track follows the creek up to the old dam; the bushwhacks to the individual drops, which are mostly audible but not visible, present varying degrees of sketchiness.

 

There is actually no good reason to spend a lot of time investigating or photographing the waterfalls of One Mile Creek. They are very small, and while they have some scenic qualities virtually every other stream in the Queenstown Lakes District region possesses similar qualities and many are significantly more impressive. My excuse is that I didn't have a car when I was in Queenstown, it was a rainy day, and I had a new ND filter and waterfall fever. My initial plan was to hitchhike to the, by all accounts, much more scenic waterfalls of Twelve Mile Creek, on the Mt Crichton/Sam Summers loop trail about 12 miles (as the name might indicate) down the dead-end Queenstown-Glenorchy road, but after waiting a few minutes and observing that, actually, there seemed to be very few cars coming back down the Queenstown-Glenorchy road, I got cold feet and decided to limit myself to trails within walking distance of my hotel.

 

From the beginning of the track the cascades start almost immediately, and there is not much letup in the gradient almost all the way to the old dam. This translates into a rather steep climb, and moreover, the track is often quite far above the stream, necessitating awkward traverses of the brushy slopes. I gave several of the cascades a miss due to said slopes looking a bit sketchy (well, it was raining, and the rocks were pretty slippery). The old dam itself no longer has water flowing over it; the creek has been diverted to drop over an adjoining rockface, forming what would have been a pretty little waterfall if not for the enormous rusty old water pipe running straight down the middle.

 

Above this the creek flattens out for quite a while, and the track climbs away from it up to the Skyline Gondola and further to the summit of Ben Lomond, about 1400 meters above lake level. The climb up to the gondola is not that interesting, mostly pine forest and mountain bikes, so if you're not interested in taking it or climbing up to the summit you may as well return the way you came.